"We all go a little mad sometimes."
There are very few directors who are considered a genius in the art of filmmaking. Some examples are legends such as Stephen Spielberg, Orson Wells, and Stanley Kubrick. This post is about another genius director, often referred to as "The Master of Suspense" Alfred Hitchcock. Known for numerous films such as The Birds (1963), Dial M for Murder (1954), and Rebecca (1940), his most famous work is perhaps Psycho, based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The film has become a classic, spawning numerous sequels, spinoffs, a remake, and most recently, a prequel TV series, although none of the other ones have been able to capture the audience like Psycho has.
The film, despite being made in 1960, is shot entirely in black and white; while the common belief is that this was done to replicate the looks of the classic Universal horror film of the 30s, the real reason is much simpler: Paramount refused to finance the film because they didn't like the script, and Hitchcock filmed the movie in black and white to cut costs (and a side result of that happened to be that the infamous shower scene was kept from being too gorey). I do think, however, that the film probably benefitted from it being black and white, as the simple lack of colors made many of the scenes much more suspensful and creepy than it might have been if it was in color.
The film uses numerous unexpected plot twists to great effect. The first twist is Janet Leigh's character, Marion Crane. At the time, Leigh was a major star in Hollywood and the film had essentially been advertised a "A Janet Leigh film" (even the poster has Janet Leigh front and centre with Anthony Perkins cast off to the side); with how much they were focus on Leigh's character stealing the money and running way, the assumption that everyone had (and I had as well) was that the movie was going to revolve mainly around her, which made it shocking when she is killed relatively early on in the film and the money she stole in just thrown away by Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), taking away (what was at that point) the main character and an extremely important plot point. Marion and the money essentially becomes a McGuffins, which is something that is used to kickstart or move the plot along but has absolutely no real importance in the final view of things; and true to form, the money never appears again or is mentioned as a plot point of particular importance.
The audience really loses a sense of direction with the famous shower scene, because our "point of view" protagonist character is dead and what the audience saw as the main plot point is just completely gone. When I first saw the movie, not knowing at all about the twist (somehow I had managed to miss what was one of the most famous movie twists of all time) or how the movie ended, I had no idea how the movie was going to go on; was the movie going to somehow continue Marion's story or was this going to be a slasher film with new victims showing up one after another?
The film is continued with Marion's boyfriend Sam Loomis and her sister Lila (who gets married to each other apparently in the sequels), who believes that Norman killed Marion. Now of course, they are right, but they believe Norman killed her for the money (a perfectly reasonable conclusion and motive), when the audience knows Norman did not know about the money at all. So after the shower scene, the film turns into a murder mystery in a way, but with the viewers basically knowing how the murder happened and more or less the motivation for it (even if you don't know that Norman is his mother, you can still make the assumption that Norman's mother killed Marion because she was overprotective of her son or just jealous of a new female presence).
Norman Bates is such an interesting take on a serial killer. Psycho functions in many ways like a slasher movie in the veins of Halloween (The male protagonist of Psycho and Halloween are both named Sam Loomis, with Dr. Loomis of Halloween being named after Psycho's Sam Loomis) or Scream; although the body counts are much smaller and the same kind of horror and gore aspect aren't there, it has a dangerous, seemingly unstoppable, unknown serial killer with a knife and it does have more then one death and a big fight at the end, so you could argue that in a way Psycho functions very similar to a slasher movie. Typically, in a slasher movie, the killer is usually not very deep in character; the killers are always given a backstory and a general explanation as to why they're evil, but usually everything about the killer is revealed towards the end and throughout the movie the killer's interactions with the protagonists/victims are always violent and the killer rarely speaks or show much personality.
In comparison, Norman Bates is completely different; it was easy to have made Norman just an emotionless serial killer who murders and then just explain the split personality at the end as a wrap up to the killer like most movies tend to do. However, Norman is a deep and complex character that the audience see much of and maybe even come to like to some degree, at least at the beginning. Although Norman is disturbed like so many other serial killers are, Norman's disturbance is much more sympathetic; while not being his mother, Norman as a person is deeply lonely, socially awkward, and a fairly nice person who you can't help but feel bad for. Until the reveal, Norman is just seen mostly as a product of an abusive parent (which is exactly what he is) who is kind of forced to cover up his mother's crimes due to a mix of her abusive nature and his deep love for her, and you can't help but feel bad for Norman. And even when everything is revealed, nothing changes; Norman IS a victim of his mother's abuse and he can't exactly control his murderous actions. By making us, the viewers, get to know and sympathize with Norman Bates the person, Hitchcock forces us to sympathize with Norman Bates the killer, which is an extremely ingenious move on Hitchcock's part.
Finally, let's talk about the twist ending. Nowadays, the split personality twist ending is a cliche that has been done to death, this was a fairly new idea at the time and it was so complex for the time period that they needed to dedicate an entire scene to have a psychiatrist explain the entire thing. The scene does seem redundent and kind of stupid to a modern audience since most of us are so familar with the general idea of a split personality disorder, you could just kind of figure it out on your own, but the inculsion of the scene does show you just how much of a groundbreaking film this must have had on the genre as a whole. The twist ending is honestly fairly predictable when you really get down to it (it's obvious that the mother was dead the entire time considering we never see her face, meaning that Norman had to be the killer), but again, this was considered a real shock when the movie first came out, another testament to what an absolute genius the movie is.
It's honestly really hard to find a flaw with Psycho. Even though the identity of the killer aspect is fairly predictable by today's standards, there are still lots of it (like Marion's murder and the money being thrown away) that are genuine surprises if you're a modern viewer watching it without knowing about the movie's plot. It is expertly acted, directed and written, and really the only parts that could be considered "weak" are just the lack of blood or real violence (understandable due to the time period) and the ending where the psychiatrist explans what's wrong with Norman (again understandable due to the extreme rarity of these kinds of twists). The soundtrack used, especially in the shower scene, is brilliant, and the special effects with chocolate syrup as the blood still holds up quite well. The movie has been parodied or referenced so many times and it really shows how much of an icon it has become in films.
For my next review, I will be doing another Doctor Who review, covering the incarnation I consider to be the greatest Doctor of all time, the man who defined the character of "The Doctor" for years to come. As always, thank you for reading my blog, and I always will enjoy hearing from all of you, so if you have any comments, feedbacks, opinions, suggestions, etc., please feel free to comment, and I WILL respond to ALL comments!
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